An age being mathematical, these flowers <br />Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized <br />By men with wakened, speculative minds, <br />And when with mathematics they explored <br />The Macrocosm, and came at last to <br />The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it <br />Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light, <br />The Tulips were the Light's receptacles. <br />The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips! <br />No emblems they for us who no more dream <br />Of mathematics burgeoning to light <br />With Newton's prism and Spinoza's lens, <br />Or berkeley's ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire. <br />In colored state and carven brilliancy <br />We see them now, or, more illumined, <br />In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit <br />To go with vestments red on Pentecost.<br /><br />Padraic Colum<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tulips-2/
